Europe 2013: Dachau Concentration Camp

I realize that this may be a bit ironic, but I think that the highlight of our trip to Europe (for me) was spending four-five hours at the Dachau Concentration Camp, located just about 15 minutes or so outside Munich.

This was unlike any other place I've ever been in my life...

After Adolf Hitler became Reich Chancellor and founded the National Socialist dictatorship, the camp at Dachau opened as a camp for political prisoners on March 22,1933.  The camp remained in operation until 1945, making Dachau the longest running concentration camp of the Third Reich.

The prisoners of Dachau concentration camp originally were to serve as forced labor for a munitions factory and later, to expand the camp as the war progressed. A separate area of the camp was used as a training center for SS guards and Dachau became a model for other concentration camps.

View along the cobblestone road between where the train unloaded new prisoners.
and the Jourhaus.  The prisoners were forced to build the Jourhaus in 1936.
It served as the main exit and entrance to the prisoners’ camp and as the main
office of the camp SS personnel.

We were surrounded by people (although ironically, not NEARLY as many as a few days prior when we went to the Palace of Versailles and had to wait in a line -- in the rain -- for nearly 2 hours and then pay approx $25 each to get in) but everyone was polite.  Everyone was quiet.  No one pushed to get in front of you to see whatever you were looking at or reading.  No one poked me in the eye with their umbrella.

I am normally not a museum person and can't bear to read all the signs.  But here, I read every word on every sign.  Sometimes twice.

Front entrance gate with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work will make you free)

Below is the main administrative/maintenance building, which now contains the museum.  The new memorial in front replaces the words formerly painted on the roof which read: “There is one path to freedom. Its milestones are: obedience, honesty, cleanliness, sobriety, diligence, orderliness, self-sacrifice, truthfulness, love of the fatherland.”  The museum allows visitors to see various workshops, storerooms, the prisoner kitchen, laundry, the “Schubraum” (where the prisoners were admitted to the camp, stripped of their clothes and all personal possessions) and the prisoner baths.

Turn around 180 degrees from the administrative building, you see this:

There are 2 barracks recreated to show how the prisoners lived during their time at Dachau.  Behind these two building would have been 34 other identical barracks.  The outline of each building remains with a number on the ground.  Some of them had flowers, teddy bears, notes from family members placed near the building number.

The concentration camp was designed to hold 6,000 prisoners but was nearly always overcrowded. On the day the camp was liberated by American troops (April 29, 1945), there were over 30,000 prisoners jammed into the camp.

Original fence and trench surrounding the perimeter of the camp.

In 1942, Doctor Rascher begins conducting medical experiments, such as bone transplants, phlegmon and hyperthermia experiments, on the prisoners.  By the end of 1944, there were over 63,000 prisoners living in overcrowded conditions at the Dachau concentration camp. The camp overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, and the weakened state of the overworked and malnourished prisoners sparked the start of a typhus epidemic.

Over the 12 years in use as a functional work/concentration camp, Dachau recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and reported the deaths of 31,951. Two separate crematoria were constructed in order to dispose of the deceased.

Original crematorium. 

Barrack X, the new crematorium constructed in 1942 increased the capacity.

Should be be interested in learning more, you can take your own virtual tour here:
http://www.kz-gedenkstaette-dachau.de/virtual_tour.html